Esber

As I navigate the world of fashion deeper and deeper, witnessing it's intricacies and context within culture, climate, geography, economic cycles, subcultures and even politics, I've consistently found that the true beauty of fashion is in just that. Context.

It's not news that the fashion industry has a bad rap for being conceited and wasteful. (I was recently asked in a slightly vexatious interview how I could possibly work in such an industry that was all about narcissism - I swiftly pointed out that was entirely untrue). While I don't disagree that it is a wasteful industry (one of the reasons I have declined countless emails that ask to send me free product) or that it has reached certain levels of vanity, I also believe it is a powerful form of communication. I am not merely referring to self-expression or (hashtag:) mood, but rather of sociological identification, as if to operate in it's own dimension of time, particularly in luxury fashion, and particularly now, with the democratisation that the digitial era brought with it and the so-called end of social stratification as explained in Jean-Noël Kapferer and Vincent Bastien's The Luxury Strategy.

What I've discovered of Australian designers, for instance, is the power of subtlety, a concomitant design approach of the casual ease of the country's lifestyle. Christopher Esber, fabricates his garments free of hyperbole and instead focuses on the muted but

fundamental details that form and shape his pieces. It's refreshing to constantly be around creative minds that prefer to let the work speak for itself - during a time where the cacophony of social media and self-promotion can get distracting and overwhelming. Bravo.